


Take My Hand (Don't Fear the Reaper)

by dracusfyre



Series: Tony Stark Bingo Challenge [28]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Powers, Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Character Turned Into a Ghost, Crack Crossover, M/M, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-15
Updated: 2019-04-21
Packaged: 2020-01-14 11:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18475756
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dracusfyre/pseuds/dracusfyre
Summary: For the ITAB prompt:After Afghanistan tony became a part-time grim reaper assigned to the winter soldier, since Bucky has a messed up head he can see tony.





	1. Chapter 1

“This is bullshit,” Tony announced, looking down at his dead body. While he watched, his would-be savior, a tall, thin, slightly familiar looking older man sat back on his heels with a sigh.  He bowed his head and muttered something in a language Tony didn’t understand, probably some prayers for Tony’s newly departed soul or something.  “I’m right here, though,” said the newly departed soul, sourly trying to kick a rock and failing.

**NOT FOR LONG,**  a deep voice said, seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at the same time.

“Christ!” Tony jumped and spun at the same time, then his face went blank with disbelief. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

**I’M NOT, BUT I DO GET THAT A LOT.**  The origin of the voice was a bony figure in a black robe, carrying a no-shit scythe.  Tony glanced at the man who had dragged himself to his feet and was reaching for a blanket to cover Tony’s face, but he didn’t show any sign of seeing the figure in black.  _Of course not,_  Tony thought.   _He’s not dead._ **INDEED,** Death said.  **ARE YOU READY?**

“Doesn’t it bother you to be a cliché?” Tony said, gesturing to the scythe and robe. “I mean, really?”

**NO,**  Death said.  Its shoulders may have moved in a shrug, but it was hard to say.  **DOES IT BOTHER YOU?**

“Hey!” Tony protested. “I’m not…” But as he stared down at the blanket covered lump that used to be him, he found that he couldn’t lie, not even to himself.  Spoiled rich weapons dealer who got killed with his own weapons?  It was the ultimate morality tale of one's own sins coming home to roost, missing only a lost but beautiful princess and a poor but noble prince.  “Well, shit,” he said finally.  “Yes. It does bother me.” He scowled as he watched the man move slowly around the room, tidying the mess that had been made by Tony’s abrupt, if short, residence in – what was this place? A cave? What the hell was he doing in a cave, anyway?

**THAT’S UNFORTUNATE,**   Death said, not unsympathetically. **BUT ITS TIME TO GO.**

“Is this the part where I make a deal or like challenge you to a fiddle contest or something?” Tony paced around his body, still not willing to admit that it was over.  If he’d been in a hospital they could have used that shock cart or something to bring him back to life, but in this cave there was nothing so sophisticated; to Tony’s dismay, the man didn’t even have a sink to wash his hands in, he was just using the sand of the cave to dry up the blood on his hands before wiping them on a rag that wasn’t much cleaner. 

**CAN YOU PLAY THE FIDDLE?**  Death asked, sounding mildly curious.

“What? No, that was just…I mean, I can play the piano, and the violin a little. What I meant was, is there anything I can do to…” Tony started to run a hand over his face in frustration, but his hand just went right  _through_  his face without stopping.  Not real, not even to himself. “I just feel like it wasn’t supposed to end like this.” He straightened as a thought occurred to him. “I have unfinished business! I can’t go into the light if I have unfinished business!”

**THERE IS NO LIGHT,**  Death said, this time sounding irritated.   **YOU CAN’T STAY.  I HAVE A STRICT NO GHOST POLICY.** He pointed one long bony finger at a sign that appeared over his shoulder, a plain wooden thing that had “NO GHOSTS” written on it in careful, painstaking brush strokes.   Underneath, in slightly sloppier writing, it said “133,590 Days Since Last Ghost.”

They stood there for a moment while Tony scowled at the sign, at Death, and at the cave where the poor man was still trying to tidy up.  They stood there for long enough that Tony had a realization.  “You can’t make me go, can you?” he said. “I have to make a choice.”

**NO, I CAN’T MAKE YOU GO,**  Death admitted. Just as Tony was starting to feel victorious, the man’s movements slowed until they came to a complete halt, right in the middle of him throwing away a pile of bloody bandages.  The dust floating in the air, barely noticeable, stopped its movements, and the faint buzzing of the hastily rigged lighting in the room went silent, making the room deafeningly quiet.  **BUT I CAN WAIT.**

Tony knew himself better than to think he was going to be able to outwait Death.  He was many things but patient was not one of them.  “So there’s no other option?” He said, aware that he was bordering on wheedling. “Go with you or be stuck here in this moment forever?”

Death was quiet for so long that Tony was starting to think that he wasn’t going to respond when he heard a strange whistling noise.  It was a sigh, somehow exhaled through a skeleton.  **THE ONLY OTHER OPTION IS FOR YOU TO JOIN ME. BECOME A REAPER.**

“Seriously? I have to take your place? That’s a real thing?”

**NO, THERE IS ONLY ONE DEATH. YOU WILL BE MY ASSISTANT.**

“Oh. Like, I do what you did for me? Meet people when they die and help them move on?”

**YES.**

Tony thought about that for a while.  It seemed a bit morbid, but still better than leaving forever and going to the terrifyingly unknown place that comes next.  He didn’t know why the thought of moving on filled him with such dread and fear, but he did know he’d do anything to put it off as long as possible. “Sure, it’s a deal.”

**VERY WELL.**  Death held out his skeletal hand and Tony shook it gently, wondering if he was supposed to feel different or look different as time resumed its course around them.   **YOU CAN HAVE THE PROBLEM CASES,**  it said as it turned away. 

“So do I get my own robe and scythe, or-” With the suddenness of flipping a switch, Tony was out of the cave and standing in a ditch next to a country road, staring at a crumpled mass of a car that had just hit a tree head-on.   A woman was standing next to it, looking confused. 

“Hey,” Tony said as he approached, waving his hand to get the woman’s attention.  “Are you okay?” he asked out of habit, then winced.  Duh, she wasn’t okay, she was dead.

She turned to him and waved back at him, polite but vague, still looking confused.  “What just happened?”  She frowned at the car, and then at the forest around them.  “I was in the car, something ran out in front of me, and then I was just standing here.”

“You had an accident,” Tony said, clearing his throat. “And you, uh, didn’t make it.”

“What do you mean? I’m fine, I’m standing right here-“ She turned to look in the car and Tony tried to grab her by the shoulders to stop her, but his hands went right through her, ending up in her chest. Tony jerked back, embarrassed, but the whole awkward interaction was enough to distract her from turning around.

“I don’t know if you should do that,” he said apologetically. He could see the woman’s body over her shoulder, and there was a  _lot_  of blood. “You should just trust me.  I’m here to help you move on,” he added.  “You know, take the next step.”

“So are you an angel?” She asked, looking dubious.  Tony glanced down at himself and realized he was wearing the suit he’d been wearing when the convoy was attacked, so as far as outfits he would be spending eternity in, it could have been worse.  He wondered if it was possible for him to change into something more casual and resolved to figure that out later.

“Uh, no, not really. I’m a, um, person, like you, that was chosen to help others cope with this…transition,” Tony offered.  “But I am sure you’ll meet an angel when you move on.” He realized that that was something he really should have asked Death about, and wondered if there was a way to contact him.

That was when the woman started to cry and Tony felt himself starting to panic.  He’d never been good with people crying. He couldn't pat her on the shoulder comfortingly, so he just said the kind of “there, there, it will be okay” stuff that he’d seen people do on TV, the whole time wondering if by “problem cases” Death had meant criers.  Then he started tuning in to what she was saying between sobs and realized she was not sad, she was  _angry_.

“That  _goddamn-“_ gasp “sonofabitch” sob “is going to” gasping sob “ _get away with it!”_  Then she screeched with rage, tears still coursing down her cheeks. “He  _cheated on me_  and now he doesn’t even have to pay alimony! He gets my  _life insurance_! My  _retirement money_!” She screeched again and stomped on the ground. “This is  _such bullshit!”_

“Oh man, that does suck,” Tony sympathized, taking a surreptitious step backwards

“I’m going to haunt him,” the woman swore, eyes red and wild. “I’m going to make his life  _miserable_ -“

“I’m afraid not.  No ghosts allowed,” Tony said apologetically, taking another step back when she glared at him.

“That’s not  _fair!”_  But the rage that had come so quickly seemed to have burned itself out, because that wasn’t screeched at nearly the volume of her other rants.

“I know it’s not,” Tony agreed. “Both of us should have had longer lives, time to do everything we wanted, but this is just how it is.  But now you get to find out what’s next, and that’s gotta be a way better use of your time than wasting it on some asshole, right?”

She sniffled and wiped at the tears on her face, jumping when her hand passed through her face just like Tony’s had. “I guess that’s true,” she said.  “He’s not worth it. I hope he marries that greedy trollop, she’s going to take him for everything he’s worth.”

“That’s the spirit,” Tony said wryly. “Are you ready?”

The woman turned her face to the sky, glanced around the peaceful forest for a moment, then nodded. “Okay. So what do we do?”

_Hell if I know._  But Tony smiled confidently. “Just come with me,” he said, and they took two steps together away from the still-ticking wreckage of the car, and then-

**GOOD WORK** , Death said.  They were in some kind of blank, dusty plain – or maybe plane would be a better word – and Tony saw the woman disappear in a flash of light.  The look on her face before she disappeared was beatific, and that made him smile, feeling gratified that he had helped her go to a better place.

“Thanks,” he said as he turned back to Death. “Are they all going to be like that? The problem cases?”

**NOT ALL OF THEM, NO.**

Well that was good, at least.  “Hey before you go, I have some questions-“

But Tony was already in a new place, a tiny apartment where an old woman was puttering around trying to clean, apparently oblivious to the fact that her hands were going right through the knickknacks she was trying to arrange on the mantle. 

“Guess I’m going to have to figure it out on my own,” he sighed, and went to go introduce himself.


	2. Chapter 2

“You’re losing him,” the man dressed in combat gear snarled. "If he dies, there'll be hell to pay."

Tony shivered when one of the doctors rushing around the body on the table walked through him as they attempted to stem the steady flow of blood that was starting to drip onto the floor. Tony glanced at the heart monitor, seeing the irregular pulse and dropping blood pressure numbers, and waited for the spirit to appear.  Usually he didn’t show up until after the spirit had left the body, but judging from the amount of bloodloss it didn’t seem like he would have to wait long today.  While he waited, he glanced around the room with curiosity; despite the hospital equipment, this was clearly no hospital room, or if it was, it was some Nurse Ratched style place.  The walls were painted cinder block and the floor was vinyl, with harsh florescent lighting and no windows, and the only door to the room was a brutal metal affair with heavy locks on it.  With a frown, Tony turned back to the dying man on the table and saw that he was handcuffed hand and foot to the metal bars of the operating table.

“Poor bastard,” he said with sympathy. He couldn’t imagine that it would be hard to convince this guy to come away with him; this place looked like a dungeon and judging from the number of wounds on him, the man had gone ten rounds with a small army.  Finally the irregular heartbeat vanished, the heart monitor gave its flat monotone beep, and the man’s spirit flickered into existence next to his body.

“What the hell?” Tony blurted without thinking, taking a step back from the new spirit. He’d never seen anything like this before; the spirit was wavering and blinking in and out of visibility, like a TV with bad reception, and it was changing shape like it couldn’t remember what it was supposed to look like. First was the image of long-haired man on the table, then a dapper, well-groomed young man, then an old-timey looking soldier with a thousand-yard stare.  No matter his appearance, he had none of the confusion that other spirits had; Tony got the impression from his resigned look that it was not so much that the spirit wasn’t surprised that he was dead, but that this had happened so many times that he was used to it.

“Hello?” After he got over his surprise, Tony stepped into the man’s line of vision, trying to get those winter-gray eyes to focus on him instead of staring into space. “Hey,” he said again once he had eye contact. “My name’s Tony, what’s yours?”  This was normally a good way to get newly-departed spirits to snap out of the daze brought on by the trauma of death, but for this guy, it seemed to make his…condition or whatever, worse.  The shape changing grew faster as he frowned, and the flickering got more pronounced as the doctors brought in a defibrillator to restart his heart.  When the man turned back to look at his body, Tony reached for him and was surprised when his hand made contact.  It was enough to make him jerk back in shock, but the man was still trying to go back to his body so Tony reached out again and took his hand.

“Don’t go back,” he said. He couldn’t explain why he felt so afraid for this man and his strange, splintered spirit, or why he could touch him and no one else, but he knew,  _knew_ , that there was nothing good for this man back in the world of the living. “Come with me."

“I can't _,_ ” the man said brokenly, and then he disappeared, the heart monitor started beeping again, and Tony snapped away.

***

Tony had no way of gauging time these days; he could vaguely track the changing of the seasons sometimes, but since he jumped all over the planet taking care of troubled or troublesome souls, he had no idea how accurate his timekeeping was.  But he didn’t  _think_  it was very long before he was pulled back to the strange soul that he’d met only briefly.  This time, the situation was even stranger than the last; the man’s body was encased in a metal and glass tube, looking peacefully asleep as frost crawled across the window of the tube.  Meanwhile his spirit was standing next to it, staring down at himself with a strange look on his face.  Around the room people in lab coats bustled while people in military gear stood guard; there were more tubes like the one the man was in but they were all empty, and as for the rest of the electronics in the room Tony could only guess at their purpose.

“Is that a cryostasis chamber?” Tony asked with fascination as he examined the tube.  He didn’t expect the spirit to answer, and he didn’t, so Tony wandered around the room and looked over the shoulders of some of the scientists, trying to figure out what he was looking at.  One of the screens had the man’s vital signs, which were so low that he was all but dead.  “Guess that explains why you’re a problem case,” Tony mused.  The man was close enough to death to discorporate, but not dead enough to actually move on to the next step, so he was essentially stuck here until something happened one way or another.  Which mean that  _Tony_  was stuck here, so he wandered back to the spirit.

“Hey, if I ask you your name again are you going to, you know, glitch again?” Tony asked as he sat down next to the cryo chamber.  The spirit finally pulled his gaze away from his body long enough to look at Tony with a sort of baffled recognition.

“They call me the Soldier,” he said eventually.

“I doubt that’s your name, though,” Tony said. He patted the concrete next to him invitingly and after a moment, the man took the invitation and sat down next to him. “I don’t think people put things like ‘The Soldier’ on a birth certificate.  Do you remember me? My name is Tony. And whoa, what is  _that?_ ” Tony poked the man right in the middle of the star that was painted on what looked like a shiny metal shoulder.  Now, like before, Tony’s touch actually made contact, and the arm was as unyielding as the concrete beneath him.  “Huh.”  Tony’s ran his finger down the arm, feeling the ridges of the articulating plates that got narrower and more frequent closer to his wrist.  “You know, if I were still alive, I’d probably have a boner by now.  This right here,” he said, tapping the Soldier on the back of the hand, “I would have done acts illegal in many states in order to have a chance to take a closer look at this thing.”

The Soldier took a look at the hand like he hadn’t really closely examined it before, comparing it with his normal hand, and grunted thoughtfully as he opened and closed them. Today he seemed to be steady with one form, instead of flickering between multiple ones; in the time he’d had since he’d first seen the Soldier, he’d come to the conclusion that the flickering was probably caused by memory problems, maybe the trauma of whatever had almost killed him.  The man couldn’t remember what he looked like, so when he discorporated, his spirit didn’t know what form it was supposed to take.  

“So, you come here a lot?” Tony asked, trying to get some kind of response out of the guy.  The hubbub in the room had died down; now there was only one scientist left, probably typing up some kind of report. Other than that, the room was silent as a tomb. Tony got the feeling that they were deep underground and wondered, not for the first time, where in the hell they were. “Hey, where in the hell is ‘here,’ anyway?”

“Yes. I’m here all the time,” the Soldier answered, voice grave and serious. “And this _is_ Hell.”


	3. Chapter 3

It took a bit of pestering to figure out what the Soldier meant, but Tony finally got the story – the man had fractured memories of a long fall, then pain, and waking up transformed. “They send me to Earth to do things, terrible things, then bring me back here,” he said, gesturing to the room. “Where I wait. There used to be another who would wait here with me, his name was Death. That’s how I knew this was hell, because even Death couldn’t free me.”

For the first time in a long time, both in his life and after it, Tony was stunned into silence.  He stared into the Soldier’s wintery eyes, their bleak faith that he was a sinner doomed to hell, and his heart broke with a physical pain in his chest. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “No,” he repeated with more confidence.  He moved so that he was kneeling in front of the Soldier and took the man’s face between his hands. “This place, whatever they do here and whatever they make you do, is not hell.  These are men, terrible men, that do this, and nothing that is happening to you is your fault. Understand?” The Soldier hesitated and shook his head. Tony sighed.  “But do you believe me?” The Soldier hesitated again, for longer this time, and Tony could see the indecision in his eyes.  “I wouldn’t lie to you,” Tony said. “I can’t. I work for Death, and Death doesn’t lie, right?” That earned him a nod.  “I am going to figure out what is going on here,” Tony said with determination, and stood.  “After all, it’s not as if we don’t have time.”

With some trial and error, Tony and the Soldier realized how far they could wander in the compound; the Soldier could get about thirty feet from his body before he started flickering, and Tony could get about twice as far from the Soldier before he got snapped back to his side.  Their voyages yielded little, though.  They found offices, but neither of them could interact with the computers or the file cabinets and no one that worked here was sloppy enough to leave folders open on their desks or their screens open to useful information. Sometimes, Tony overheard conversations that would have made his stomach turn if he had such an organ anymore, about human experimentation and world domination and less dire but still disgusting conversations about “undesirables.” It cemented his certainty that something was very, very wrong with this place, but he had no idea what he could do about it.

They did, however, figure out the Soldier’s name by the simple but time consuming method of Tony rattling off every name he could think of until the Soldier recognized one.  There was a shiver of recognition at Steve, but the real winner was James.  Not only did the Soldier straighten suddenly, eyes wide, when Tony said it, but it also triggered one of his glitching spells.

“James,” the man said like it was a revelation while his form shivered between the long haired, ghost-eyed warrior and a softer version of himself with shorter hair and two human hands. “My name was James.”

“ _Is_  James,” Tony corrected, elbowing him in the side.  “Just because you forgot it doesn’t mean it’s not your name anymore.” James nodded but didn’t seem convinced.  “Do you remember anything else? Maybe something about Steve?”

At the mention of Steve, James’ form froze on the younger version of himself for almost fifteen whole seconds.  “I think he was blond,” James said.  “Blue eyes.  I…” He frowned, and then his form slid back to the grim, long-haired soldier. “I can’t remember.”

“Well, you guys must have been close,” Tony said, patting him on the hand. “So he was probably a good friend.  Want to hear about my best friend Rhodey?"

Tony kept weaving stories for James while they waited there in the grim compound, vaguely measuring the days by the workers who came and went.  Once in a while one of Tony's stories would trigger a memory for James, and he would wait patiently while James stumbled his way through the memory, gradually gaining confidence the more of them he discovered.  They found out that he was born and raised in New York and that they shared a love of working on cars.  Sometimes it was a little boring, because periodically James would become withdrawn and silent and nothing Tony did could draw him out of it, but for the most part, James was great company.  More than once Tony found himself wistfully wishing things could be different, but as afterlives went, it could be worse.

Then came the day that James had to go.  More and more people filled the room where James’ body was hovering on the edge of life and death, and as they watched the activity, James grew increasingly grim and withdrawn even as his hand tightened on Tony’s.

“I don’t want to go back,” James whispered, hiding his face in Tony’s shoulder.  “I don’t know what they’re going to make me do.”

“I know,” Tony whispered back.  The whine of machinery in the room was getting louder. “I’m so sorry.”  He wanted to say  _it’s going to be okay_  and  _I won’t leave you_  but he’d promised never to lie. “I’ll see you again,” he said instead. “Next time, I’ll be here with you, okay?”

“I hope I’ll remember you,” James said, and then he disappeared as the cryo tube with his body in it opened amid the hissing of released gas.

 ***

The next soul was particularly difficult, perhaps because Tony’s mind was still with James; he had no patience with the man who kept insisting that he wasn’t dead and eventually snapped at him, causing an argument that lasted much longer than it should have.  After the man sullenly agreed to move on, Tony was pulled back to Death’s dusty plane and even thought Death didn’t say anything, the thirty seconds of mute reproach was punishment enough.

“I’ll do better,” Tony said repentantly; he certainly didn’t want to be fired from being a Reaper, if such a thing was possible, before he saw James again. “Cross my heart and hope to…well, you know.”  Then he snapped away to the next soul.

It was dozens of souls before he saw James again, standing next to his body just like last time. This time, however, the tube he was in wasn’t in the concrete bunker but a room with glossy marble floors and hundreds of tiny metal doors on the wall.  _A bank vault,_  Tony realized.  The room was small, barely big enough for someone to walk all the way around the cryotube, and they were the only ones there. 

“Hey there, soldier,” Tony said softly as he came to stand beside James, touching him gently on the shoulder.  It took James a moment to turn, but in that moment Tony felt a shiver of fear like ice water; in the time he’d been gone he’d often wondered if James would remember him.  He didn’t know why the thought of being forgotten hurt so much, but it did, so in that breathless moment before James answered him Tony died a little inside.

“You came back,” he said, smiling shyly, and Tony sagged against him in relief.

“Yeah, I promised, didn’t I?”

For a moment they leaned together, then James said, form flickering a little, “I remembered something.”

“Yeah? Tell me.”  Tony led James a little bit away from the cryotube, to the corner of the room where they could sit against the wall side by side while James haltingly retold things that he thought were memories, or maybe dreams of memories.

“I missed you, while I was awake,” James said softly, hours later. “I looked for you but you weren’t there.”

Tony ran his thumbs over James’ knuckles; it felt natural for them to be always touching, if only the press of their shoulders together as they traded stories back and forth.  But usually, like now, they held hands.  Tony hadn’t realized how starved for touch he’d been since he lost the ability to touch anyone, and luckily James seemed just as hungry for it.  “I missed you, too, but you won’t see me when you’re awake,” Tony said.  “I only exist for the dying and the dead.”

“Then maybe one day they’ll forget about me,” James said, looking wistfully at his body, sleeping away the weeks and months in the cold of the cryotube.  “Then I can stay with you forever.”

The fact that this was something James hoped for made Tony indescribably sad.  “James, you should hope that one day you will wake up and be free of these people,” Tony said gently. “Not stuck here, mostly dead with only half-assed Grim Reaper for company.”

“You can’t tell me what to do,” James said with his shy grin, poking Tony in the side. “Oh! I remembered something.”  Tony could tell because his form was flickering again, this time to someone with slicked-back hair looking sharp in an old-timey Army uniform. “Steve would say that to me. I would say…” James’ forehead creased as he chased the memory. “I would say, ‘stop getting into so many goddamn fights,’ and he would say, ‘you can’t tell me what to do.’”

Tony laughed.  “Sounds like a man after my own heart.”  He hoarded these little fragments of James, treasured them, because every time James remembered something new he seemed to regain a little bit of himself, shedding his resigned hollowness and becoming confident and smart and funny.

It was even more impossible in this room to tell what time it was, but even Tony would have said that it didn’t seem like very long before James started to get agitated.

“It’s too soon,” he said. He got up to pace around his body.  Tony realized James must be able to feel it, feel his body as it thawed and came back to life.  The door to the vault opened and scientists began to pour inside.  “I don’t want to leave you.”

“I’ll be here next time, too,” Tony promised. “Just like this time, okay?”  James nodded, and Tony pulled him into a hug, and that’s where they stayed until James flickered and disappeared.

***

But the next time Tony saw James, it wasn’t like the others.  This time, they were on a bridge, in broad daylight; people were running and hiding, screaming as the thunder of bullets filled the air. There were so many people here that died so suddenly that they were just huddling, terrified, close to where their bodies had fallen.  It was a massacre and James was right in the middle of it, stalking down the middle of the street with his weapon raised, his grey eyes hard and cold as steel, his shy smile hidden behind a faceless mask.


	4. Chapter 4

_They make me do terrible things,_ James had said.  This man seemed so different from the man Tony knew that he had a hard time believing what he was seeing.  "James!" He called out, his breath catching in his throat when he thought he saw him hesitate. He took one step towards him, wanting to call out, wanting to make him stop-

“Get down!” The soul next to him hissed, crouched down in safety behind a shot-up car, not realizing that his body was still behind the wheel. 

Tearing his eyes away from the hunter that had James' face, Tony shook himself.  There was no way James could see him or hear him, nothing for him to do but help the souls still stuck here.  He gestured for the man to follow him.  “Quickly,” he urged.  “Come on, you’ll be safe with me.”  The soul scrambled to his feet and took two steps with Tony before he disappeared and Tony jumped to the next soul just a few feet away.

The streets had cleared quickly, leaving James as the only man standing amid the chaos of the blaring horns and the oily smoke filling the air.  He was looking for someone, rifle moving from side to side as James searched for his prey.  Tony heard two loud pongs as someone sprinted across the top of a van and then a woman dropped down on James’ shoulders, trying to wrap a wire around his neck.  Tony’s heart was in his throat as he watched the struggle, then somewhere around his knees, Tony heard a terrified whimper, and he realized that the soul kneeling next to him was staring at James in terror.

“It’s okay,” Tony said as he knelt down beside her, blocking her view of the carnage on the streets. “He doesn’t see you, you’re safe,” he said, still craning his neck to see James even though he knew he should be helping this woman move on. James had thrown the woman off his shoulders but in the struggle his mask had been torn off, and as Tony watched someone big and blond and beefy stepped out from behind the wreckage of an overturned bus and said, “Bucky?”

“Who the hell is Bucky?” Tony and James said at the same time. 

James stared at the man for a long moment before he lowered his rifle, and Tony could see the hardness as it melted away from his eyes to be replaced with confused recognition. “Steve?” he said hesitantly, like he wasn’t sure if he was remembering properly.

“Bucky,” Steve repeated, slowly approaching James with his hands up. “I thought…I thought you were dead.”

When the realization hit Tony it hit hard, making him sit down heavily next to the still-cowering soul. James “Bucky”  _Barnes,_  his brain filled in, and Steve  _fucking Rogers_. AKA Captain America.  How in the hell were they still alive and kicking after all this time?

Well, he reflected grimly, he knew how James was.  Years of being held in cryosleep had slowed his aging, but Steve…Tony swallowed and turned away.  It didn’t matter.  Steve would save him, Tony told himself. Steve wouldn’t let James go back to the men that had taken him away from himself, that had broken him so thoroughly.  Maybe Captain America would even be enough to save the world from whatever those people were planning.

“It’s over,” Tony said to the woman, somehow mustering a smile. “Come with me, okay?  I’m going to take you somewhere better.”

 ***

Tony deliberately tried not to keep count of the time that had passed since the last time he saw James; he also tried not to think about him or to wonder how he was doing, whether he was happy and had all of his memories back, but he was much less successful at that.  Time passed in a blurred succession of souls, people who raged against their fate and people who despaired, and the whole time Tony felt increasingly numb and tired until one day he just sat down and said, “I can’t.”

 **WHY?**  Death said, and the soul stopped in the middle of his impassioned argument as to why he wasn’t as dead as Tony insisted he was.   **TIME TO GO,**  Death said to him, and instead of arguing the man nodded meekly and vanished.

“I can’t do this anymore,” Tony said dully. “I just…I just want to see James.”

**WHO?**

“The man who was frozen,” Tony said.  “He stayed near death for years, and I would always stay with him until he woke up again.”

**OH YES. THAT WAS QUITE DULL, I WAS HAPPY TO HAVE YOU TAKE OVER.**

“But I didn’t think it was dull,” Tony said. He really just wanted to curl up into a ball and put his head in his hands, but this guy had died in a sleazy hotel with a prostitute so he kinda wanted to have as much dignity as the surroundings would offer. “I liked it. I miss him.  I want to see him again.”

Death’s “No Ghosts Allowed” sign appeared again, and Death pointed to it expressively, even tapping it with one bony finger.

“I know,” Tony said. “But I want to stay.  Last time I wanted to stay because I was afraid to go, but now I have something to stay for.  Please let me go back to him,” he pleaded. “Even if he can’t see me, I need to make sure he’s okay, that they aren’t hurting him anymore.”

 **YOU NEED TO PASS ON,**  Death said.  **UNLESS YOU ARE GOING TO CONTINUE TO BE A REAPER.**

“I can’t,” Tony said again.  “Even if I said the words, I don’t think I could go to what comes next. And I don’t want to be your assistant anymore. If…If I can’t be with James, I’ll just stay in that in-between place and wait for him.”

 **FINE,**  Death said with a resigned sigh, and over his shoulder the sign reset to say “0 Days Since Last Ghost.”  As Tony’s stubborn spirit vanished, a skeletal mouse in a black robe squeaked at Death’s feet.   **I KNOW,**  Death said to it.   **I CAN’T HELP IT. I CAN'T RESIST A GOOD LOVE STORY.**

 ***

Tony was disoriented for a moment when he landed; there was no confused or angry soul, just a quiet, peaceful room filled with plants and the soft sound of the radio.  There was a man curled up in an overstuffed armchair, a book resting on its arm as he dozed in the late afternoon sun.

“James!” Tony said in relief, crossing the room to studying him in his sleep.  He seemed well; his skin had lost its pasty whiteness and his hair was no longer the dark tangled curtain from before; in the sunlight Tony could see that it was a deep reddish brown.  As James snorted in his sleep and stirred, without thinking Tony reached out and brushed his hair gently away from his face, resisting the urge to bury his hands in its inviting thickness. 

As James' eyes blinked open, Tony froze as he realized James could see him _._

There was a moment where James looked confused, and Tony had the fear again that James wouldn't remember him.  But then he said “Tony?” and sat up straighter, staring at him like he couldn’t believe his eyes. He rubbed a hand over his face, then pinched his arm to see if he was dreaming.  “Is it really…I mean, you're...” He straightened with alarm. “Holy shit, am I dead?”

“No, James, no,” Tony hurried to reassure him, crouching next to the chair so his head was level with James'.  “I’m just…here.  Death broke his rules to let me be here. With you.  No more reaping.”

James reached out and miraculously, Tony could feel the gentle stroke of his fingers against his cheek.  He leaned his face into the touch as James said, “I thought I had just dreamed you up.”  Leaning forward, he rested his head against Tony’s.  “My therapists all said that my brain made you up as a way to cope with the trauma.”

“Nope, I’m as real as the next ghost,” Tony joked weakly.

Shaking his head, James stood and pulled Tony into a hug. Tony let himself sink into it, pressing his cheek against James’, reveling in the fact that he could hold and be held. Even if he was invisible to anyone else, he was real to  _James_  and that was enough.

“I hope it’s okay that people are going to think you’re crazy,” Tony said, and James laughed as he pulled away. “Since no one else can see me.”

“I don’t care,” James said.  “I feel like I’m half a ghost, anyway, since I spent most of my life with one foot in the grave.”  He pressed a kiss to Tony’s temple, and when Tony lifted his head for more, kissed the corner of Tony’s eye.  “You're real, and I can see you, and that’s what’s important.  I can't wait to tell you all the things I've remembered.”

“Sure, you say that  _now,”_ Tony started and was interrupted by a knock at the doorway. James straightened and pulled away, and they both turned to see James' big beefy blond, Steve, standing there. “Hey, I’m sorry for disturbing you, I just heard that you were awake and wanted to tell you that dinner is ready.” Then his gaze fell on Tony and he said, “Who’s your friend?”


End file.
